An afternoon at the ballet
I love going to the ballet, even though I don't know anything about ballet. As an arts critic I've spent a lot of time trying to become some kind of authority (whatever that means) on the disciplines of art I write about. So, for me that's always been video games first with theater and literature following behind. When it comes to dance, I know absolutely nothing and yet I can't help but be mesmerized when I see a performance.
For me, ballet is an education. Every show is an opportunity to learn something new about the medium itself and its mechanics. How does this specific type of performance tell its stories? While sitting in the dark theater, watching those dancers whirl around on stage I must try and parse my emotional response to what I am seeing with little background on what would make it good or not. In my experience so far, this works out fairly well due to one of the core principles of ballet I have come to realize, it's an art form where emotion comes first.
When I leave a performance all I have is the emotion the performance elicited in me. This weekend, that emotion was one of disappointment. I had a sneaking suspicion that the American Ballet Theater's adaptation of Crime & Punishment had missed the mark. In adapting such a thematically and narratively dense text, the emotion driven movement fell somehow flat. Rather than capitalizing on the ability to punctuate the overarching question of who deserves to live and die with flourishing movements, everything felt...limited.
Given my job, this might seem like a given, but I love reading criticism. For me the best criticism not only dissects and evaluates a piece of art on its own merits but also seeks to inform the reader, leaving them with a better understanding of not only the piece in question but also the medium at large. Seeing ballet and reading criticism of it reminds me why I love what I do. Reading reviews of ABT's Crime & Punishment gave me the words to describe what I felt was wrong with the production and, as a result, left me more informed about the ballet as a whole. Next time I go, I'll be just a little more capable of judging the art in front of me.
Oh, and it turns out I was right on the money--- people did not like Crime & Punishment.